


Mi Manchi

by bellalinguista



Category: Station 19 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, covid mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27480331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellalinguista/pseuds/bellalinguista
Summary: Maya misses Carina e a Carina manca Maya.
Relationships: Maya Bishop & Carina DeLuca, Maya Bishop/Carina DeLuca
Comments: 12
Kudos: 157





	Mi Manchi

Carina knew it was coming; she saw it coming. She watched on in fright as her home country struggled to contain it before it erupted in the north, causing a wave of massive panic to flood the peninsula and its islands: country men fleeing from their jobs in the north to their family homes in the south, leaving empty grocery aisles behind in their search for safety from a vast unknown.

But they couldn’t flee from it - impossible. Instead, they hid from it. An unheard of measure: a nation wide lock down in all twenty Italian regions. 

Stay at home. Carina would stress this over and over again with her father who was now forcefully retired and back in Sicily after his stint in Seattle.

Although there was a need for doctors - that there was a shortage and they were asking for those no longer practicing to return, Carina begged him to not put his life in danger - to not go. He was already safer simply by being in the less struck area of the country, why risk it? She felt like a hypocrite for saying such a thing. If their situations had been reversed, Carina would not think twice of returning to work.

She would not have hesitated for a second.

But this was her dad. 

This was the man who raised her by himself. 

This was her  _ papà. _

Carina was insistent in the matter: do not leave the apartment.

Do not leave your home and things will get better.

That is what they were saying; that is what they were hoping.

It was all that they could do. 

_ Andrà tutto bene _ , they would say to try to collectively encourage each other.

_ Everything will be okay _ . 

They stand on their balconies and clap for their first responders and medical doctors who are doing everything they possibly can to help the sick.

_ Andrà tutto bene. _

Medical doctors that Carina went to school with back in Sicily.

_ Everything will be okay. _

Her former medical school cohorts that she had lost touch with, the ones now posting in despair across social media platforms? The ones who found themselves practicing medicine as if in time of war - in triage to determine who was worth saving? The ones who now had to play god on top of trying to upkeep their medical oath? 

She reached out to them and they told her horror stories. They all came with a grave warning: this was coming and there was no stopping it. They could at least learn from and listen to Italy; they could at least prepare. 

But there was no preparing; there was no learning or listening.

And Carina saw it coming like a slow, massive tsunami - pain staking making its way to a healthcare system ready to buckle under its immense weight.

Before she knew it, it was here.

It was in Seattle.

_ Andrà tutto bene _ .

Grey Sloan Memorial became a nightmare battleground - a war zone that Carina had heard about not even weeks before. 

_ Everything will be okay _ .

And they quickly fell into a new normal.

A new normal that involved not enough to go around; nothing was enough to protect them: face shields and full body gowns. Surgical masks became a hot commodity and N95s? The unobtainable holy grail, it felt like.

It started slow, but nearly all at once, it became all hands on deck at the hospital.

And the terrifying stories that kept her up at night? Well, Carina now found herself in the middle of them, witnessing it all first hand. The lack of proper testing; the inability to  _ actually _ treat; and the fear of even going into rooms more than necessary.

Everything she thought she knew about medicine was put to the test. 

_ Everything _ . 

There was no solace in going home at the end of a long shift either. No, the nightmare continued even there: do not take the mail in right away, be sure to properly and carefully change out of work clothes, and continue to disinfect everything.

And to top it all off: she was also coming home to an empty apartment.

A very quiet, empty apartment.

Though, sometimes, the neighbor’s sweet little orange tabby cat would sneak over to her balcony to pay her a visit every now and again, but other than that?

There wasn’t any other company.

And the cat wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

Good listener, though - she’d give the little guy that much.

But there was someone else she would rather share that balcony with.

It was a conscious choice and one that Carina did not make too lightly.

As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t go from being cheated on, to a confession of love, to a mandatory quarantine in such little time. Too much to process and too much to work through with nowhere to go - to escape to, really.

Maya wasn’t too happy with the answer; she did not do the best job at hiding it, but she went along with Carina’s wishes. She understood where Carina was coming from; she was the one who put them in such a position anyway. Carina insisted that it wasn’t…  _ entirely _ true.

And that is how their entire relationship became solely based on text messages. The first couple of days, Maya asked if they could FaceTime, but Carina came up with an excuse every time and when they weren’t always the best (or credible for that matter), Maya caught on and stopped asking altogether. 

Carina felt guilty.

She knew that they needed to talk, but she wasn’t quite ready to tackle everything they needed to tackle. She wasn’t ready to face Maya, even if it would only be through a screen - even if it wouldn’t exactly be tangible. 

Texts felt the most she could handle right now.

It was the only thing she could trust herself with.

So their conversations became ‘how are you’s and ‘how was your day’s. Carina didn’t check her phone at work out of principle - it would’ve been just another thing to keep track of while at the hospital. It became a nightly never ending cycle of the same thing -  _ another _ new normal to integrate into their lives.

That is, until Maya started sharing just a little bit more.

The last few weeks, she had started seeing a therapist - televisits, but still seeing someone, regardless. Carina told her that she’s proud of her.

And she is, truly.

They started moving past the ‘how are you’s and their days. They started sharing sweet stories and little things again. It began to feel like normal again. 

_ Normal _ normal.

At least..  _ almost _ . 

This one particular evening, Carina found herself sitting on her balcony with a glass of wine, trying to relax after a long shift. As she texted back and forth with Maya who was enjoying a bit of downtime at the station, Carina spotted her old, familiar friend sneaking through the railings. She still hadn’t learned the cat’s actual name; she had officially dubbed him Micio for now.

Nothing original by any means. 

_ Micio micio _ is how one tries to call a cat over to them in Italian.

And, well, there  _ may _ have been a few evenings where a not entirely sober Carina had tried to call the little guy over for the sake of company during a lonely dinner.

Carina sent a picture of her new quarantine friend and it prompted a story from Maya - about the time where she literally had to save a cat in the tree. The ultimate firefighter stereotype.

It was something about a grad student from the University of Washington cat sitting for their boss, except the cat had escaped through the front door while the kid accepted a delivery order. They quickly learned that chasing a scared cat does not yield the results one would hope: a cat safely returning to the confines of their nice, warm home.

No, instead the cat dove under the delivery guy’s car. Both decided to circle it and try to lure it out - no dice. Then the delivery guy had the brilliant idea to start the engine of the car. It sent a very frightened indoor cat up a tree that it could not bring itself back down from.

The end result?

An embarrassing call to the fire department and Firefighter Barbie on a ladder to get the poor creature down, but not before it did a number on her arm. She could not blame the cat - the thing was scared out of its mind.

Carina spammed her with a series of laughing emojis and Maya questioned if she was truly that amused. She promised that she was. Maya immediately stated that she misses Carina’s laugh.

That she misses Carina.

But Carina cannot bring herself to say it back, even if she felt the same way. Instead, she confirmed that Micio was an outdoor cat. She did not want to open herself up to such emotions again so soon.

She wasn’t sure where they stood exactly.

They still hadn’t talked about it.

And neither one of them seemed to want to mention it either for that matter.

Immediately after the awkward reply, Carina turned to Micio and warned him to never do the same - whether she meant get stuck in a tree or keep your emotions bottled up, she wasn’t sure. 

She didn’t want to have that discussion with her neighbor - about being stuck in a tree, naturally.

Not about one’s inability to tell their… partner? To tell their partner how they were feeling.

Actually, truth be told, she also wasn’t entirely  _ sure _ which neighbor this cat belonged to.

And they continued to share with each other - these little gems from their past or whatever made them smile. Their conversation fell into step again and their banter returned; it felt familiar.Carina didn’t realize how much she missed that: the familiarity of everything. 

Every now and again, Maya would talk about the progress she was making and Carina always made it a point to be encouraging. Talking about her emotions and her weakness is not Maya’s forte - something Carina was well aware of.

Honestly, she was glad that Maya was talking openly to her; that Maya was trying. It gave her a sense of hope in the midst of all this.

The next time, a couple weeks later, when Maya told her that she misses her, Carina was able to send the same message back with little hesitation.

Because she did. 

She missed Maya.

Returning home from another endless shift at the hospital, Carina noticed a handful of missed messages.

_ Know you won’t see this until later. Just got back from a rough call. _

_ I hate this. _

_ And by this, I mean everything. _

_ Shit, that’s vague, too. _

_ Can we FaceTime when you get off? I want to see you. _

Settling down in the corner of her living room couch, Carina forewent sending her usual evening text and ended up calling Maya instead. It was the first time she had seen the other woman in weeks.

They both look ragged. They don’t need to say anything to each other. They can already tell: not enough sleep and too much stress.

But Maya looked a little bit more worse for wear than Carina - she was still at work, afterall.

It took Maya a couple moments to start talking about the call. A run of the mill call. It should have been simple enough, but there had been one problem: the hospitals were full. There was nowhere to go and the patient in question did not fall into their tirage definition of ‘dire.’ 

This young man had no one in the city; he had moved here to get a new start on life before everything closed down. Terrible timing. Ended up losing his job; took up delivering for one of the many delivery apps. Then, he got sick.

With no one to turn to.

And there was nothing they could do for him. He wasn’t sick enough to be brought anywhere; there weren’t any tests readily available. The only thing they had been able to do was to tell him to call back if he was feeling worse.

They didn’t get into their respective professions to  _ not _ help people, but their hands were tied. 

This was a lot. Carina could relate. She had seen a number of sick expecting mothers now and felt the same way - felt even more helpless because she could not one hundred percent guarantee that this would not affect their  _ bambini _ in any way. They just didn’t know.

There was a lull in the conversation before Carina spoke again: she missed Maya. Maya wished she could come over, but it wasn’t possible. It wasn’t safe.

That was when the FaceTime calls became more frequent: dinners were shared via a screen (sometimes even attempting to cook the same meal at their respective apartments), weird little online games were played, and conversations spanned for hours on end. Some evenings, they would even fall asleep on call with each other.

Every call ended the same way.

I miss you.  _ Mi manchi. _

But at least this was better than words on a screen. At least now they could see each other without actually  _ seeing _ each other.

And they continued in this manner until they saw themselves on the other side of the curve, until things began to calm down, until they finally saw the numbers drop.

All that came down to this one evening.

The knocking at the door makes her heart race; it’s company she knows she is expecting, but it’s company she’s longed for. She can’t but be excited - giddy even. Such a childish response, but at this moment, Carina doesn’t care - and she had spent her whole day off patiently waiting.

Abandoning her efforts in the kitchen, she goes to open the door for Maya who is equally all smiles. They can’t help themselves. 

There’s a quick moment of hesitation between them before Carina reaches out and touches Maya’s arm - a small act that sparks a jolt of electricity in both of them.

“ _ Mi mancavi, bella, _ ” she says softly.

“Yeah,” Maya nods. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I read the synopsis for the second episode of Station 19 and then this just sort of happened to help me process what kind of story line we may be getting this season.
> 
> Thanks for reading; thanks for the interaction.  
> Alla prossima <3


End file.
